You know not what you say

People really don't think about what they say, do they?

(Wow, this is going to take a lot of background before I can even begin to explain what someone said tonight that hit me so wrong. I guess I better get started.)

The Setting 

You know that I attend a Buddhist Sangha once a week, practicing in the Plum Village Tradition of Thích Nhất Hạnh (or "Thầy" for short) and affiliated with a local Unitarian Church. (I have regularly called it "the UU Sangha" and I wrote about it recently here.) Typically we practice sitting meditation, a little walking meditation, and then we read a text or watch a video and discuss it for dharma study. 

For the past several months, we have been reading Thay's book Fragrant Palm Leaves: Journals 1962–1966. It's a good book in a number of ways, among them that it shows what Thay was like when he was a young monk, before he had acquired the aura of the World-Famous Great Teacher that surrounded him for much of his life. Tonight's reading finished the next-to-last chapter, and included the following story by Thay.

Last year I went to the British Museum. I was fascinated by the preserved remains of a human body buried five thousand years ago.... Every detail of the man's body had been preserved. I could see strands of hair, his ankles, each intact finger and toe. He had been buried in that position five thousand years ago in the desert. The heat of the sands had dried and preserved his body.... A little girl, about eight years old, stood beside me and asked in a worried voice, "Will that happen to me?"

I trembled and looked at this tender flower of humanity, this vulnerable child without any means to defend herself, and I said, "No, this will never happen to you." Having comforted her, I walked with her into a different room. I lied about something that Chandaka, the Buddha's charioteer, never lied about to Siddhartha.* [If you don't know the story of Siddhartha and his charioteer, you can find it here.] 

The Remark

After we finished our reading, we discussed it. One of our newer members—he joined just a few months ago—is a retired UU minister. I guess for now I'll call him The Reverend. He had already delivered himself of a short speech when we were all checking in, about the bombing of Iran on March 1. He explained that he opposed bombing other countries and that he considered his role now to be one of public opposition and activism.** When we came to discuss the reading, the Reverend immediately referred back to the story of Thay comforting the little girl in the British Museum. Then he said, "I want to take this as the text that I live by, from here going forward." He talked about how Thay spent so much time around small children: helping them, supporting them, comforting them, and encouraging them to see the beauty and the love in the world. And he concluded by quoting the very end of this chapter (a few pages later), where Thay writes:

I want to tell Steve not to worry about a thing. Tomorrow when peace returns to Vietnam, he will be able to visit Phuong Boi. Phuong Boi taught us what this love is, and Phuong Boi will share it with Steve in the language of wildflowers and grasses.... Flowers don't know how to hate. We will return to the circle of life as flowers, grasses, birds, or clouds to bring people the message of eternal love. Like the village children who, even in this time of war, sing:

"We will love others forever and ever, hand holding hand. We will love others forever."***

As the discussion progressed, many people said they found the Reverend's words inspiring. 

Tired

Oh look, it's Friday the thirteenth! Also I see that it is just exactly one month since my last post. Hmm.

I've had a note on my desk to write this for ... gosh, it feels like at least a week. And I was meaning to write it for maybe a week before that. But I just couldn't muster the energy to bother. Something ironic in that.

First the good news: my cough is almost gone. Yes, I said a month ago that it was "getting better," but there was a long, long tail on that curve. I still had plenty of times that it would incapacitate me for minutes ... just not so many of them as before. And slowly, bit by bit, the attacks got fewer. I started attending Sangha in person again, instead of by Zoom, because I didn't need to screen out quite so many coughing fits. And by today (knock wood!)—really, for a few days now—it seems to be almost gone. Once or twice late at night, maybe, but not otherwise.

Other than that, I have been wiped out most of the month.I have kept current on my writing deadlines. (That's one blog post about professional topics under my real name per week, and one short little blurb per week also under my real name.) I have gone out to get groceries when I need them. I have met other obligations when they have come up. But not much else.

All I want to do is sleep. Coffee will postpone the sleep, but it doesn't give me any boost, or the feeling of actual energy in my limbs that makes me want to go do stuff. Only spirits give me that boost (echoes of this post, thirteen years ago!) but of course I can't spend the whole day drinking. So I get up in the morning, browse the Internet, have breakfast, take a nap, browse the Internet some more, maybe answer a couple of emails, have dinner with wine, browse the Internet with a nightcap or three, and go to bed. And my body feels sluggish except when I am asleep, like I have to drag it through the motions. No wonder I'd rather be asleep! That's the only time that I'm not fighting my body just to move it through space.

Is this what "wanting to die" feels like? I don't perceive myself to be especially sad, but just getting through the day seems to take more effort than I feel like expending. 

Is this depression? (I wrote about that here. My plan of taking some of my old SSRI's didn't last very long, though.)  

Here's another ironic bit: I wrote all the above in the present tense, but it doesn't actually reflect how I feel this morning. For the last couple of weeks I've been trying to get a little more exercise, and maybe to eat a little less often. The last couple of nights, it's turned out that I've had little or nothing to drink. I've started going to bed earlier, with the result that I sometimes sleep 9 or 10 hours at a stretch during the night. And by the most remarkable coincidence, I've started napping less, and I've felt incrementally more energy. Wow, who would ever have thought there could be a connection? (Yes, that's sarcasm.) On the other hand, I do take notice that I couldn't even muster the energy to write about this state while in the middle of it. I hope I can maintain a little momentum in the current direction.

      

My cough is getting better, 3

Once again, I am writing this to put a mark on the calendar. Once again, I hope that writing about the subject won't jinx anything. Once again, I am knocking wood.

For a while now ... maybe a couple of weeks, I'm not really sure ... it has felt like my cough has been on the whole rarer and more sporadic than it was in November and December. Of course the progress hasn't been linear; a sequence of good days could still be punctuated by a bad day. But last week I attended Sangha in person for the first time since I began feeling the tickle in my throat.

Then yesterday it seemed as if my whole head had turned liquid on the inside, and was draining out my nose. I soaked four handkerchiefs and innumerable tissues. I got nothing done all day (actually that's been a problem for a while regardless of my cough) and I went to bed at 8:30. I slept ten hours or more.

And this morning I feel ... different. I won't claim that it's all over. But I've been up for more than half an hour while logging in and typing this, and I've coughed once. A small, almost vestigial cough. Did yesterday drain all the gunk out of my head? I guess we'll see. But maybe.

As of today, it's been eleven weeks and some—not quite twelve weeks—since the day this round of coughing started. Maybe it's winding down. At any rate, I'm hopeful.

       

What was and what might have been

This post is a little different from everything that has come so far—over 1500 of them. This post is deliberately, consciously fiction. But that shouldn't be so strange. I've used this venue to make forays into poetry, philosophy, armchair psychology—even meming, for heaven's sake!—in addition to all my usual whining. Why not fiction?

"Roughly he grabbed her heaving shoulders,
pulling her down onto the bed and ...."

So to be clear, what I have linked in the pages below never really happened. It is purely fiction. More than that, it is actually pornography, or at any rate an attempt at pornography. I don't know if it really works, but that's how it should be graded. If it doesn't work, leave me a comment to let me know why, or what I need to fix.

Having said all that, the story is nonetheless based on an event that really happened. Back in the summer of 1992, Marie undertook a cross-country road trip. She stopped in for one weekend to visit Wife and me. (I mention the visit briefly in this post.) The visit was fun, but its long-term consequences poisoned my friendship with Marie for a while, because Wife told her lies about us that led Marie to offer to be my side-piece. I was already uncomfortable with Wife sleeping around, and I was pretty sure I was in favor of monogamy on principle (even though I also wanted to get into the pants of Girlfriend 1, who wanted nothing to do with me). So I was troubled and confused over the issue, and this meant that I handled Marie's offer very clumsily. She was hurt, and took my rejection very much to heart. When we finally got back together in 2016, we had a lot of damage to work through.

But recently I began to wonder, What if Wife had just told Marie the truth? And then what if, on top of that, she had been a lot more cunning and skillful at human relations in general? Could we have had a different outcome?

The story that follows is one possible answer to that question.

Meeting Dorcas

Three days ago—last Saturday morning—I finally met Son 1's new girlfriend. I'll call her Dorcas. I spent a little over an hour visiting, and she was very pleasant. Wife was also there, and was significantly less pleasant. I wish I had been surprised by that.

The context is that I was driving to Big City to visit Mother, Brother, and SIL. You remember that I didn't go there for Christmas Eve, because the weather was too fierce. But Saturday was calm and beautiful; so we rescheduled Christmas for Saturday. And Son 1 agreed that I could stop by around 10 o'clock in the morning.

I arrived just about on time, clutching a little cooking I had brought them as a gift. Son 1 let me in, and then resumed his place on the sofa with Dorcas. Wife was on the other side of the room, so I found a chair that let me see everyone. For a few minutes we discussed their new kitten. Then I asked Dorcas what she does for a living.

This is a stock photo, or maybe it is created by AI. It is certainly not really Dorcas.
But it's supposed to be a research engineer, which is good enough.

It turns out she works in technology. She is some kind of engineer. Well, she's an engineer half-time, and a doctoral student half-time. Her research is related to the corporate work she's doing. I suppose I shouldn't go into a lot of detail, because it's a new field and it might be possible to identify her through it. But she has published three articles (in collaboration, of course) and already holds a number of patents (ditto). This was actually pretty interesting, and for a few minutes I tried to draw her out.

It also turns out that there are some unexpected crossover points where her work might have implications for the stuff I used to do ... and therefore for the stuff I write about in the professional blog under my real name. So I asked her some more about these points, and ended up asking if she could send me any kind of non-classified document from which I could learn more (and maybe write about it). She sent me one URL. I have yet to explore it deeply. But I was pleased to get even the one.

Of course the conversation bounced around in a very non-linear fashion. Son 1 contributed to it. I tried to tell some funny stories from my own career. I didn't learn a lot about Dorcas's personality, except that she is fond of Son 1 and is willing to tolerate his family.

Then Wife entered the conversation by booming,* "I notice nobody has asked me any questions about Henry II!" Back when Wife was in graduate school, she was a medievalist, and was starting to study the tax policy of Henry II of England. This was before she failed her Qualifying Exams, which means it was before she was given her terminal Master's and booted out of graduate school for the second time. (I describe the first time she left graduate school in this post here.)

Gosh, dear, what can you tell us about Henry II?

So Wife spent several minutes haranguing** us about Henry II and his tax policy. It had nothing to do with the previous conversation, and plainly nobody else was interested. She even made several remarks acknowledging that nobody else was interested, in a tone that was (I think) supposed to be wry and self-deprecating, but came across as merely self-pitying. (And in any event none of these remarks stopped her from prolonging her lecture.) 

After maybe 75 or 80 minutes (total, not just of Wife's lecture), I said I had to be on my way. Before Wife could make (yet another!) remark about how I was getting out because I was bored with Henry II, Son 1 quickly joined in to say, "Yes, you've got other family members to visit!" And I replied, "Yes, and I want to get there in time for dinner!" So we all said goodbye. I got hugs from Wife and Son 1, and even from Dorcas (though when I arrived she had greeted me by shaking my hand, as I expected).

My impression is that it wasn't an unsuccessful first meeting ... well, except for Wife, but I claim no responsibility on that front. But of course I can't read minds: not Son 1's, and not Dorcas's. So I don't know when I'll see them next. I hope it's not long delayed. So far as I could make a judgement, I liked her.

_____

The rest of the weekend, I spent at Mother's. I got there  somewhere between 1:00 and 1:30. We ate dinner pretty much on schedule at 2:00. Since Brother and SIL put together the whole meal, I have to qualify or retract any earlier remarks suggesting that the two of them are always late or behind schedule (see also, for example here or here).

There was a lot of food. It was all elegant and tasty. Then there was a dessert. (This was the only part Mother made.) It, too, was elegant and tasty.

Finally we opened Christmas presents. I felt a lot of anxiety about this, because all I'd done was a little cooking for everyone. Fortunately Brother and SIL hadn't gotten me much: just a couple of books about food. (Seriously!) Mother got my a gift certificate at a gourmet food store, and insisted that she was always thrilled to get the kind of cooking that I delivered.

Late into the evening, Brother and SIL went home. I slept over. Mother and I spent most of Sunday talking aimlessly, though part of the time was about Father's death and how unprepared she was. I suggested that the best way to avoid a repetition is to talk about what has to be done, so that Brother and I are prepared.

Monday, I drove home after breakfast, but I wasn't good for much the rest of the day.

And here we are in Tuesday.  

__________

* I think that Wife's hearing is getting worse. Her voice is a lot duller, flatter and louder than it used to be.  

** As I was saying ....     

      

Christmas in Carrick

And here's a less-depressing Christmas song. It's nothing like what I'm doing right now, but it is one of my favorites from Golden Bough. Maybe that's because of all the food and drink they sing about!

The album calls this song "Christmas Comes But Once a Year," but a little googling led me to find the original title as I give it in the post's heading.

Here are the lyrics:

"And what have you done?"

So this is Christmas
And what have you done?
Another year over
And a new one just begun

I'm pretty sure I first heard this song on Christmas Day. It was sometime in the mid-1970's, at my parents' house, and Brother had been given an album which included it. At any rate, that's the image that pops into my head whenever I hear it ... the living room, the tree, the lights, and the stereo system. (Gosh, remember stereo systems?)

The other thing that I always hear is that question: "And what have you done?" Does everyone else find that challenge depressing, or is it just me? On the whole I think my answer is, "Not much." It makes me see why people are so eager to make New Year's Resolutions. Of course, I don't even do that: after watching Father go on so many diets that he swore with great fanfare would make him thin, ... and then watching him go off them again after two weeks with no visible change of girth, ... I figure it is better simply to fail quietly than to fail after calling a lot of attention to yourself. (No, it never really occurred to me to treat success as one of the options. Why do you ask?)

I'm not sure I have much more to say about this. But I'm sitting home alone, watching out my window as the weather lurches dramatically from stormy to calm and back to stormy again. It's Christmas, but without any of the usual Christmas-stuff going on. So here: have a song. 

Incidentally, I had a thought this morning. When John and Yoko sang this song, their slogan (referring to the Vietnam War) was, "War is over if you want it." That sentiment probably sounded idealistic to many, but in fact the events proved it to be remarkably practical. Because in general there is always one quick and certain way to end any war: Let the other guys win! And as long as your commitment to peace is stronger than your commitment to victory, that avenue is open and available. Sure enough, it worked in Vietnam.

Here are the lyrics: